In most cases the requests are legitimate, but every now and then they also target pages that don’t link to pirated content. As a result some websites have their URLs removed from Google in error, which in turn leads to a decrease in visitors.

This has now happened to Rapidgator.net, one of the largest file-hostings sites on the Internet. For the past few weeks the site has had nearly all its URLs de-listed, including its homepage.

The request responsible for this overbroad censorship was issued by the Publishers Association, a UK-based trade group. Aside from the Rapidgator URLs, the takedown notice in question lists several other pages that have nothing to do with their copyrighted works.

Hoping to get its URLs restored Rapidgator submitted a counter-notification to Google, but several weeks have passed since and the problem remains. TorrentFreak spoke with Rapidgator operator Mike, who is concerned about the lack of response and the ease at which sites can be removed from Google.

“With the procedure Google has in place now any website can be de-listed by anybody,” Mike says.

“When Google receives a DMCA notice they remove URLs within a day, but if you want to have them restored it can take weeks or months. We think that they should restore URLs in the same timeframe as the original removals,” he adds.

Rapidgator’s operator understand that Google can’t process every URL manually due to the massive amount of DMCA notices. However, he believes that they could at least flag requests to remove the homepages of websites so these can be manually verified.

This isn’t the first time that Rapidgator has lost nearly all its listings in Google. The same thing happened late last year and on that occasion it also took several weeks before Google took action, leading to a dip in search traffic for the site.

TorrentFreak asked Google for a comment on the counter-notification process but the company couldn’t say anything about the number of requests it receives, or what the average response time is.

For Rapidgator there’s no other option than to wait until Google responds to its inquiry. In the meantime, only five Rapidgator pages remain indexed by Google.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Thus far this has resulted in more than 200 million URLs being removed from Google’s search engine. While many of these takedown claims are legit, some are clearly false, censoring perfectly legitimate webpages from search results.

File-hosting service RapidGator.net is one site that has fallen victim to such overbroad takedown requests. The file-hosting service has had nearly all its URLs de-listed, including its homepage, making the site hard to find through Google.

Several other clearly non-infringing pages, including the FAQ, the news section, and even the copyright infringement policy, have also been wiped from Google by various takedown requests.

People who now search for RapidGator on Google will no longer see the site’s domain listed on top of the search results. Instead, the first result now points to RapidGator.org, which appears to be a RapidGator affiliate.

RapidGator is one of the most visited file-sharing portals on the Internet, and the site believes it misses out on thousands of visitors now they have become invisible through Google.

“We’ll lose thousands of visitors because of this action. This is not right. If it happens to us, it can happen to MediaFire or Dropbox tomorrow,” RapidGator’s Dennis told TorrentFreak.

“Most importantly, it opens the door for phishing sites, who will register similar site name and mislead our users,” he adds.

At the time of writing, only two RapidGator URLs are indexed by Google. The file-hosting service has submitted counter-notices for several of the false takedown requests, but thus far they haven’t heard back from Google.

Interestingly, Google has processed takedown requests for millions of RapidGator links over the past months, even though the site only allowed the search engine to crawl a dozen of its pages. In other words, most of the RapidGator pages copyright holders ask Google to remove were never indexed by Google to begin with.

“Our robots.txt forbids search engines bots to index any file/* folder/ URLs. We only allow them to crawl our main page and the pages we have in a footer of the website. So most of the URLs for which Google gets DMCA notices are not listed in index by default,” RapidGator’s Dennis explains.

RapidGator hopes that Google will eventually reinstate the homepage listing, as well as the other pages that have been removed without basis.

This is not the first setback for the file-hosting site this year. Last month an Italian court ordered local ISPs to block RapidGator to protect the rights of a movie distribution company controlled by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Despite these troubles, the site remains one of the most visited file-sharing sites on the Internet, serving millions of users per day.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Even when an action gets underway it can be months or years before the matter is brought to a conclusion and despite having a pretty decent success rate, it is relatively rare for rightsholders to tackle their rivals in this manner.

More popular at the moment is to impact a site’s traffic in a particular region by appealing directly to a court. If a judge can be convinced that a site is causing immediate damage to a copyright holder that is likely to continue unless action is taken, having that site blocked at the ISP level is now a very real option in several countries across Europe.

Understandably people are concerned that the path could lead to serious overblocking and today we have the first signs that shadowy sites such as The Pirate Bay won’t be the only ones to face being censored.

VKontakte is Russia’s version of Facebook. It is a massive operation with upwards of 45 million daily users. The site allows its users to upload video and audio content which of course means that some will store copyrighted material. According to a company called Medusa Film, the site has been hosting a copy of its film Sole a Catinelle (Sun in Buckets).

Medusa Film is owned by Mediaset, a communications and media giant founded by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and owned by his family. According to their complaint, something dramatic needed to be done against not only VK.com but a range of other file-hosting sites actively making their content available.

The Public Prosecutor of Rome agreed and has now issued an order for all local Internet service providers to begin a blockade of vKontakte and several other hosting sites including Rapidgator.net, one of the largest file-hosters around.

The remaining sites to be blocked include movshare.net, nowdownload.ch, nowvideo.ch, topvideo.tv, upshared.com, usefile.com and videopremium.tv.

Marco d’Itri who runs Osservatorio Censura, a site dedicated to reporting on Italian web censorship, informs TorrentFreak that action is being taken before a hearing on the full merits of the case.

“As usual this is an ‘urgent’ confiscation request which happens well before a trial,” d’Itri explains.

It is not known whether Medusa reached out to vKontakte, Rapidgator or any of the other sites involved before they decided to go to court with a request for a web blockade. In any event, it seems unlikely that the two big ones will sit back and do nothing.

Earlier this year Rapidgator successfully fought back against another web blocking action initiated by the distributor of a cartoon movie. Fulvio Sarzana, a lawyer with the Sarzana and Partners law firm who specializes in Internet and copyright disputes, represented the site and convinced the court that Rapidgator was not responsible for user uploads.

The case with vKontakte is considerably more broad. The site is equivalent to Facebook and as such Russian citizens in Italy will now find themselves not only disconnected from files, but completely cut off from their social networking contacts.

However, as the number one visited site in Russia, VKontakte has incredible resources. Putting up a defense in a case like this should be well within its capabilities and there is a very real possibility that the decision will be overturned in due course. For the others (Rapidgator aside) the outlook seems much less positive.

Update: Fulvio Sarzana informs TorrentFreak that although not formally instructed in the case by Rapidgator at the present moment, he feels the site should appeal.

“Once again they have seized dozens of portals for a single film, which among other things, has already made 50 million Euros at the box office,” Sarzana says.

“Millions of files are being seized for a single film, a measure that appears disproportionate and contrary to European standards in terms of proportionality, adequacy and effectiveness of the measure.”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The sites all had their domains blocked at the ISP level and were rendered inaccessible in Italy. In addition, the prosecutor indicated that he wants to progress the case internationally in pursuit of full-blown domain seizures.

Of the affected sites, Rapidgator was the only one to fight back.

As one of the most visited file-sharing sites on the Internet, Rapidgator has been branded a rogue site before, not least by the U.S. Government. However, the site’s owner believes that he is not breaking any laws.

This week at the Court of Appeal, Rapidgator’s lawyer Fulvio Sarzana contested the prosecutor’s argument that the cyberlocker is responsible for the material its users upload, and the Court agreed.

The Court decided that Rapidgator should be unblocked as the operator(s) can’t be held accountable for files that he doesn’t know exist. Rapidgator’s notice and takedown procedure give the site’s management safe harbor protection.

“The Court gave the example of the lockers in a swimming pool, where the manager of the pool is responsible for what is stored inside the lockers,” Rapidgator lawyer Fulvio Sarzana told TorrentFreak.

The lawyer believes that the decision could have a major impact on the future of website blockades in Italy. “I think it’s an important precedent,” Sarzana says.

“The Court ruled that before ordering a website blockade by Internet providers, the prosecution first has to check whether the rightsholder has done everything possible to removal content from the site.”

The above means that many of the other sites that are currently blocked, including the popular KickassTorrents site, could also take their case to the Court of Appeal. Until then these sites will remain unavailable in Italy.

Rapidgator definitely has something to celebrate, but the legal trouble isn’t over just yet. While the cyberlocker may soon be accessible in Italy, the criminal investigation into the operator(s) of the site continues.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In less that half a year it grew from zero to millions of users a day.

However, today RapidGator users have been unable to reach their favorite site.

While some fear a second Megaupload-like shutdown, the current outage appears to stem from a dispute with the company’s hosting partner.

“Our hoster have suspended our account. We are working on possible solution,” the company reportedly commented on the downtime.

The above suggests that the cyberlocker is trying to find a new webhost, or attempting to resolve the current issues.

This is not the first time RapidGator goes down. In February the site said it would quit their business after Paypal threw them out. However, the troubled cyberlocker eventually chose to continue operating.

Update: Rapidgator posted an update.

DEAR CUSTOMERS,

RAPIDGATOR.NET TEAM

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

While many file-hosters panicked, former Megaupload users hopped from site to site trying to find a suitable alternative.

RapidGator was such an alternative, and in recent weeks the site saw its traffic increase from a few hundred to over a hundred thousand visitors a day. However, this newly gained popularity may only be short-lived as the cyberlocker has just lost its most popular payment option, PayPal.

“PayPal just informed us that our PayPal account is closed due to the high risks of processing file sharing payments,” RapidGator announced. According to the site’s operators this may very well be the end of the file-sharing industry.

PayPal has frozen the cyberlocker’s funds for 6 months and new users can no longer make payments through PayPal. The ban probably means that “affiliates” can’t be paid through PayPal either.

It’s not exactly clear what “high risk” PayPal refers to, but one of the most likely options concerns the many chargebacks people carried out at other cyberlocker services recently. Many users asked for their money back from PayPal when other cyberlockers such as Fileserve temporarily disabled public sharing.

RapidGator believes that PayPal’s policy will affect other file-hosters as well.

“Seems that all new file sharing hosts will experience same fate like us and all other big hosts,” they write, adding that the site will close if nothing changes in the coming month.

“We did our best to make it work, but unfortunately this circumstance doesn’t depend on us. We will run the host for a month, and if nothing will change, we will close it after,” the RapidGator team concludes.

While more cyberlockers may fall victim to the same fate in the future, for now many of the largest sites including 4Shared are still accepting PayPal payments.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.